The present invention relates to a soldering apparatus comprising at least one soldering iron with a heating element and a regulating circuit including a temperature sensor for regulating the working temperature of the soldering iron, for example by feedback control, to a predeterminable desired value.
Soldering apparatus of this kind is available everywhere and is used for diverse soldering tasks on electric circuits, circuitboards etc., in particular when relatively small batches are required. Such small numbers or batches are however frequently encountered in technical fields where the highest degree of reliability is desired, for example in the aerospace field.
In addition to the known temperature regulation circuits individual soldering stations have hitherto only been equipped with an additional operating state indicator. Precision soldering of highly sensitive components thus consequently took place only by visual assessment of the instanteous values and by inherent trust on the function of the regulating circuitry.
Since the requirement is increasingly being made in the aerospace and reactor fields, as examples for typical applications where high reliability technology is required, to document the working process and the working conditions, a considerable expenditure of time was necessary with the previous working methods in order to satisfy this requirement. Indeed this is made more difficult by the fact that under normal manufacturing conditions several workers are employed in parallel with such tasks as a working group, i.e. as a soldering or repair group. It was thus previously necessary for the important soldering parameters to be detected at each of the individual working places. This gave rise to large cost and complexity with regard to the measuring apparatus and the personal requirement.
It has occurred to the applicant that this expenditure and complexity is actually not necessary and the applicant has now therefore set himself the task of so further developing a soldering apparatus of the initially named kind that solder joints of high quality, i.e. so-called precision solder joints, can be carried out reliably and monitored using simple means while retaining the customary soldering iron. Furthermore, documentation of the course of the soldering procedure at the individual soldering stations should be straightforwardly possible.